good lord is it fucking me up! It is repeatedly, over and over making me so intensely uncomfortable that I have to put it down and put some space between me and what I just read. Like, I just finished the bit where Hanna finds the potato and I feel so many different ways that it’s hard to give voice to any of those ways individually. My heart goes out to Suzette, especially when she says stuff like “It’s so hard to love something that doesn’t love you,” when Hanna is trying so resolutely to reject her mother as completely as she can. But then there are so many other parts where Hanna reads like a lonely child that doesn’t know how to express herself properly and is lashing out at a parent, and a world, that refuses to meet her on her level.

Like, I was a problem child who had a lot of the same frustrations as Hanna when I was little. I hated being involved in things I didn’t want to be involved in, or having my emotions, feelings and thoughts discarded or considered to be beneath notice. But at the same time, I completely understand where Suzette is coming from, she has no one in her corner and Alex won’t say it out loud but he clearly thinks that Suzette is just making shit up about Hanna for mysterious reasons. And that’s mirrored against her upbringing, and how she condemns herself for doing the exact sort of things she promised she would never do when she had kids.

And just..I’m 125 pages from the end, and when I think of where the book could go from here just gives me a hollow feeling at the pit of my stomach. Because as cruel as the world can be to a mother deemed to be unfit for reasons outside her control, it’s far more cruel to difficult little girls who won’t compromise with a world that won’t compromise with them, you know? The story has every potential to break terribly for either, or both of them, and as difficult as Hanna is, I’m also very scared for this seven year old girl who is filled with all these big emotions that she isn’t equipped to handle.